Monthly Archives: June 2022

Former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner assessed Friday that former President Donald Trump is the "ultimate target" of the Justice Department's probe of the January 6, 2021, attack against the U.S. Capitol, saying that investigators are currently working their way up the "criminal food chain."

Hundreds of Trump's supporters stormed Capitol nearly 17 month ago in an apparent effort to disrupt the formal certification of President Joe Biden's electoral college victory. The violent riot occurred after Trump urged his followers to walk to the federal legislative building and "fight like hell." Many, who proceeded to follow those directions, believed the then-president's debunked claims that the 2020 election was "rigged" in Biden's favor.

Kirschner, a lecturer at Georgetown University and a legal analyst for MSNBC and NBC News, has repeatedly accused Trump of "treason" while also calling for the former president's indictment. The legal expert told The Dean Obeidallah Show on Friday that he believes the Justice Department is inevitably working its way toward a prosecution of Trump.

"So clearly I think Donald Trump is the ultimate target. And it seems to me that there are a couple of things going on. It seems to me that what DOJ is now doing is working its way up the criminal food chain," Kirschner said. "They continue to go after, prosecute and convict Donald Trump's footsoldiers of the insurrection that he told to go attack the Capitol and stop the steal. And they obeyed those commands from their commander in chief."

The Justice Department has arrested and charged hundreds of the Trump supporters who participated in the riot. A number of these individuals have argued in their defense that they believed they were acting on the orders of the former president.

The legal analyst assessed that recent efforts by the Justice Department represent a "full sprint" as public hearings of the findings of the House select committee investigating January 6 are set to begin on June 9. The hearings will be televised and will "present previously unseen material documenting January 6th, receive witness testimony, preview additional hearings, and provide the American people a summary of its findings about the coordinated, multi-step effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and prevent the transfer of power."

In March, Attorney General Merrick Garland gave Trump critics hope by saying in an interview with NPR that "everyone" who committed crimes related to January 6 would be held "accountable."

"We begin with the cases that are right in front of us with the overt actions and then we build from there," he said. "And that is a process that we will continue to build until we hold everyone accountable who committed criminal acts with respect to January 6."

A number of other prominent legal experts have called for Trump's indictment as well. Former Attorney General Eric Holder, who led the Justice Department under former President Barack Obama, has publicly backed federal charges against Trump.

"Because of what we know from what great journalists have done, the leaks that have come from the January 6th committee, if you show me that Donald Trump was involved in the efforts to, in essence, to foment a coup, and you can show the requisite intent, he has to be indicted," Holder told HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher on Friday.

Newsweek reached out to a Trump spokesperson for comment.

The former president continues to deny any wrongdoing related to the riot and efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. He insists that Biden's win was fraudulent, despite no evidence corroborating the allegation. To the contrary, dozens of legal challenges to the election have failed in state and federal courts. Even judges appointed by Trump have ruled against the lawsuits.

Trump's former Attorney General William Barr, who was widely viewed as a loyal Cabinet member, has said repeatedly that there is "no evidence" to support the former president's claims. He wrote in his memoir that he told Trump directly that the allegations were "bullish*t" and that his legal team after the 2020 election was a "clown show."

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Trump 'Ultimate Target' as DOJ Goes Up 'Criminal Food Chain': Kirschner

FILE - Former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally in Greensburg, Pa., on May 6, 2022. A federal judge on Friday, May 27, 2022 dismissed Trump's lawsuit against New York Attorney General Letitia James, allowing her civil investigation into his business practices to continue. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar, File)

MADISON Wealthy construction executive Tim Michels on Thursday landed the endorsement of former President Donald Trump, giving the newest candidate in the Republican primary for governor an edge he needs to compete in a four-way primary that includes the state's well-known former lieutenant governor.

With his endorsement of Michels, Trump inserts himself into the competitive primary with two months to go before Republican voters head to the polls and just after his preferred candidate lost in another battleground state, Georgia.

"Wisconsin needs a Governor who will Stop Inflation, Uphold the Rule of Law, strengthen our Borders (we had the strongest borders in history just two years ago, now we have the weakest!) and End the well-documented Fraud in our Elections," Trump said in a statement late Thursday.

"Tim Michels is the best candidate to deliver meaningful solutions to these problems, and he will produce jobs like no one else can even imagine."

Just hours after Trump issued his endorsement, Michels modified a television ad to showcase the former president's backing. In the ad, Michels promotes his family's construction company Michels Corp.'s effort in 2017to secure a bid to build part of wall on the U.S. border with Mexico, and pledges to block bills that would allow non-U.S. citizensto obtain drivers licenses or tuition subsidies.

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Trump's decision to back Michelsis a blow to former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, who is polling ahead of her primary rivals but failed to secure enough support at the state Republican convention last month to win the party's endorsement.

Michels, co-owner of the Brownsville-based Michels Corporation and U.S. Army veteran, enteredthe GOP primary for governor in late April and nearly 20 years after his last statewide campaign a 2004 loss to then-U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold.

Tim Michels speaks to a large crowd during the launching of his gubernatorial campaign Monday, April 25, 2022, in Brownsville, Wis.

Trump's endorsement will effectively introduce Michels to the Republican faithful. Earlier this month, less than 4% of delegates at the state GOP convention said they backed him for governor while nearly 60% said they preferred Kleefisch.

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"If I know one thing about President Trump, it's that he likes winners, and I'm the only person in this race who has won statewide not once, but four times," Kleefisch said in a statement about the endorsement.

Candidate Kevin Nicholson said while Trump has the pulse of the GOP base, "the race to replace Tony Evers as governor isn't going to be won by endorsements."

"Since the day we launched our campaign, Ive been the conservative outsider in this race. That was true then, and thats true today," he said.

The backing of Michels from Trump comes a week after Michels adopted a more aggressive stance toward the 2020 election, reversing himself and calling for the abolition of the Wisconsin Elections Commission.

Like other Republican candidates for governor, Michels now wants to dissolve the elections agency that has become a symbol for Trump's baseless claims of widespread voter fraud.

His about-face on the commission came days after he and other candidates for governor addressed delegates at astate Republican conventionwho clamored for discarding the agency.

Ben Wikler, the chairman of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, said in a statement the endorsement by Trump "only deepens the alarming division and extremism of the Wisconsin Republican Party."

"Tim Michels has been now given the green light to hit the accelerator on the campaign he was already running one that embraces election conspiracy theories and divisive policies like banning abortions without exceptions, instituting a ban on same-sex marriage, and defunding public education."

Trump endorses Michels after publicly praising state Rep. Tim Ramthun in 2021, a few months before Ramthun launched a campaign for governor. Trump commended Ramthun for attempting to put forward a resolution to decertify the 2020 election, which is impossible.

Ramthun did not return phone calls Thursday.

Michels,Kleefisch and Ramthuntraveled to Trump's Florida resort Mar-A-Lago earlier this year to visit or be interviewed for a potential endorsement that has become coveted currency in GOP primaries across the country in 2022 for candidates seeking to secure support among the party's grassroots.

In Wisconsin, Trump is popular among the GOP base but not broadly, according to recent Marquette University Law School polling.

Among Republicans surveyed in May, 49% said they were more likely to support a candidate whom Trump has endorsed. Forty percent saidhis endorsement would make no difference to them.Another 11% said they would be less likely to vote for a canddiate backed by Trump.

Overall, 61% of those polled had an unfavorable opinion of Trump while 35% approved of the former president.

The winner of the Aug. 9 primary will run against Democratic incumbent Gov. Tony Evers in the general election.

With massive personal wealth, Michels has the ability to pour millions into a short primary campaign which he began with little name recognition in Wisconsin. He owns homesin Waukesha County, Connecticut and New York City but spends the majority of each year in Wisconsin, according to state tax records.

In 2020, he owed $3.7 million in state income taxes an amount that suggests he reported income of tens of millions of dollars that year.

Since 2010, he's owed more than $1 million in state income taxes five other times, records show.

Recent years have been particularly good for Michels' bottom line. He owed $1.7 million in 2018 and $1.9 million in 2019, according to records from the state Department of Revenue.

Contact Molly Beckat molly.beck@jrn.com. Follow her on Twitter at @MollyBeck.

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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Donald Trump endorses Tim Michels for Wisconsin governor

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Donald Trump endorses Tim Michels for Wisconsin governor, inserting ...

Donald Trump has until Friday to explain why he hasn't been able to locate 12 former executive assistants that the Attorney General in New York is hoping to hear from as she winds down her 3-year probe of the former president's business.

Failing to provide a judge with a good explanation could trigger a retroactive, $10,000-a-day contempt-of-court fine, costing the former president more than a quarter-million dollars in additional fines.

The court-ordered fine, for failing to fully comply with the AG's subpoena for his personal business documents, had been capped at $110,000 and the contempt order lifted but only conditionally.

There are three agreed-upon hoops that the Trump legal team must yet jump through by Friday to keep the costly fine from being reinstated backdated to May 7 . One is the requirement that former executive assistant Molly Michael sign an affidavit explaining how she kept Trump's documents.

Another hoop: finding those 12 executive assistants, or explaining why they can't be found.

"Counsel for Respondent Donald J. Trump will provide a supplemental affidavit or affirmation as to their efforts to contact the former executive assistants of Mr. Trump by June 3," according to a stipulation agreed to by both sides this week.

Andrew S. Amer, Special Counsel to AG Letitia James, wondered in another recent filing why they wouldn't have left forwarding addresses.

"Presumably, the Trump Organization has a last known address and contact number for each of these individuals," Amer wrote.

It's "insufficient" for Trump to merely claim that "attempts ... to contact them to obtain an affidavit were unsuccessful" without further explanation, Amer wrote. "

What specific steps were taken and when to reach each former executive assistant? Did any of them respond, and if so, what did they say?" he said he wants to know.

Trump's most longstanding executive assistant, Rhona Graff, was to be deposed by James' office on Tuesday as the final condition of the contempt order being lifted permanently and the fine capped at the current $110,000.

A lawyer handling the Trump document subpoena matter, Alina Habba, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Donald Trump Can't Say Where 12 of His Former Executive Assistants Are

If Donald Trump laid his right hand upon a Bible and swore, The sky is blue, the sun rises in the East and sets in the West, and the New York Yankees have the most World Series titles, with 27, many in the media and on the left still might call him a liar.

Trump has been out of the Oval Office for more than 16 months, and yet, he seems to be living rent-free in the minds of many Americans and international elites who have come to loathe him.

But, facts are facts. Just because many people hate Trump does not mean that he cant be correct sometimes or even, often.

Tens of millions of Americans believe in his policies. Hillary Clinton may think of Trumps supporters as Deplorables, but most of these people consider themselves to be pragmatic, commonsense, rule-of-law Americans who are trying to survive difficult times.

When Trump offers an opinion or makes a pronouncement, hes generally directing his remarks to that demographic. But those statements can be factual. Consider two recent broadsides from him.

First, Trump reached out to the Pulitzer Prize administrator to rescind the 2018 prizes for national reporting awarded to The New York Times and The Washington Post for their investigative reporting of the then-alleged Trump-Russia interference into the 2016 presidential campaign.

Said the former president to the Pulitzer office: There is no dispute that the Pulitzer boards award to those media outlets was based on false and fabricated information that they published. The continuing publication and recognition of the prizes on the boards website is a distortion of fact and a personal defamation that will result in the filing of litigation if the board cannot be persuaded to do the right thing on its own.

Now, all but the most partisan Democrats realize that the rumors, charges and investigations of Trumps alleged coercion with Russia during the campaign were suspect from the start. These allegations were tainted by troubling partisan connections to the Clinton campaign and Obama administration officials including, sadly, some in the FBI and the Department of Justice.

The Times and the Post should have uncovered that the shameful smears against him were political and partisan in their investigations, Trump pointed out.

That raises an important question: Did those news organizations do honest investigations, or were they simply hoping the charges were true because of some journalists inherent biases against Trump, which were exhibited in hundreds of negative stories they printed about him?

With regard to the Pulitzer Prize or the Nobel Prize, for that matter, awarded to President Obama in 2009 for nothing more than inspiring Hope its becoming clear that the award is generally given to those on the left, by the left.

Maybe the Times and the Post would be better served investigating the Pulitzer and Nobel committees for ignoring conservative voices. In the meantime, they should display the ethical good grace to return awards given under false premises.

Then there is Trumps professed outrage following the news that a jury acquitted Michael Sussmann, an attorney who once represented the Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party, of a charge of lying to the FBI.

Our Legal System is CORRUPT, our Judges (and Justices!) are highly partisan, compromised or just plain scared, our Borders are OPEN, our Elections are Rigged, Inflation is RAMPANT, gas prices and food costs are through the roof, our Military Leadership is Woke, our Country is going to HELL, and Michael Sussmann is not guilty, Trump wrote on his Truth Social site.

Now, its logical to assume that Trumps opinion is biased, considering that the case revolved around alleged political dirty tricks against him. But even Georgetown University law professor Jonathan Turley said on Fox News, I dont believe the jury got it right. No one could seriously not argue that it was a very favorable jury for the defense.

Unfortunately, this case like so many things that impact our daily lives is now increasingly viewed through the prism of partisanship. Its a trend that bodes ill for us all.

Partisan award committees rewarding partisan media for political hit jobs, and potentially biased jurors exonerating the enemy of my enemy, might seem like a good idea to like-minded ideologues, but it is ultimately a recipe for disaster.

No one has to agree with Trump all the time or ever. But sometimes he raises the alarm on fairness issues that are worth debating for the sake of our nation.

Douglas MacKinnon, a political and communications consultant, was a writer in the White House for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, and former special assistant for policy and communications at the Pentagon during the last three years of the Bush administration. His latest book is The 56: Liberty Lessons From Those Who Risked All to Sign the Declaration of Independence.

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When Trump is right, hes right but many refuse to admit it - The Hill